


Princeps

by Lomonaaeren



Series: From Samhain to the Solstice 2019 [16]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Defense Against the Dark Arts, Gen, Mentor Harry Potter, Time Travel, Unspeakable Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21527806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Harry has worked for years as an Unspeakable to identify the best point where he might go back in time to change the impact of Voldemort’s war. Now he knows: he will have to return to his parents’ Hogwarts years and encourage the Slytherins to stand on their own instead of following a leader. He knows how to assume the post of Defense professor and how to reach the Slytherins. And from there, well, surely nothing can gotoowrong.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Lily Evans Potter, Harry Potter & Severus Snape, Regulus Black & Harry Potter, Sirius Black & Harry Potter
Series: From Samhain to the Solstice 2019 [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1532687
Comments: 248
Kudos: 4985
Collections: Harry Potter Goes Away (Time travel/accidents/escapes and others)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year. The title comes from a Latin word for the leader of the Senate, and also “first, foremost,” sometimes considered as “first among equals.” There will be three parts.

Harry walks slowly to the middle of the ritual chamber. He’s moving slowly from sheer shock. All of this preparation and time and struggle, and now the ritual is _done._ The circle awaits him on the floor.

Well, not a circle. A pentagram. And instead of the bowls of earth and water, the contained spells for water and fire, he has bowls of cobalt and iron instead, a diamond lying alone in the bottom of a silver basin and an emerald pried from a piece of Black jewelry on a small pedestal. Harry himself will stand at the fifth point of the pentagram.

It’s strange, but it’s what his research uncovered as the best way to travel in time.

Harry lets his grey robe drape around himself as he folds his arms. He’ll appear in the middle of the past Department of Mysteries if all goes well, and he’ll need the other Unspeakables then and there to _know_ he’s an Unspeakable. He shudders a little at the thought of what they might do otherwise.

He bows his head. The research was what took so long. The actual ritual itself is simple, but it had to be constructed in a certain way to meet the requirements of time, space, ingredients, and incantation.

“ _Vade retro._ ”

The world around him blurs. Something like a great pendulum made of white light swings back and forth in front of him. Harry feels the taste of iron in his mouth, and he thinks he sees the diamond and the emerald slam violently into each other before his sight becomes entirely unreliable. He doesn’t see what happens with the cobalt.

He’s too occupied with the sensation of his body being played like a harpstring.

*

When he opens his eyes, he’s in the middle of the stone ritual chamber, but surrounded by other Unspeakables. All of them have their hoods back, and he notes that he doesn’t know any of their faces. Harry waits, and then a tall woman with long blonde hair in three braids steps forwards and bows her head to him.

“It is July 31st of the year 1975, Unspeakable. We assume that you have achieved what you wished from your time travel?”

Harry conceals a thin smile. Yes, they would assume that, since otherwise, his body would probably be a three-dimensional portrait of organs along corridors of time that no one ever treads.

“Yes, Unspeakable.” Harry nods to her and reaches up to touch his hair. It’s straight and dark, the way the ritual also mandated and that he searched for a way to do. He doesn’t want to look too much like a Potter. He reaches up and traces his fingers over his chin and cheeks, and they’re also reshaped. He relaxes.

“Your eyes, Unspeakable?”

“No,” Harry says, shaking his head. He wasn’t able to bring himself to give up that link to his mum, and he couldn’t find an Arithmantic equation that would tell him how to do it anyway, but it doesn’t matter. Few people will be looking for a link between a Muggleborn fifth-year, as Lily Evans will be right now, and the new Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

“Very well. Your name?”

“Henry Salvare,” Harry says without pausing. He chose it for a reason. He’ll sound like a half-blood with an assumed name, which is exactly the way he wants to sound. Being a Muggleborn would mean he couldn’t influence the young pureblood supremacists, while trying to claim ties to a pureblood family in this time wouldn’t be intelligent.

“Very well,” the Unspeakable repeats, and she moves out of the way, bowing to him, to allow him to leave the chamber.

Harry nods to them and exits. He appreciates them treating this like a normal occurrence, but then, it is. He has himself seen seven people come through the ritual chamber, on their way back and forth through time to repair ravages or achieve some research objective. Time is a much-more-raveled garment than ordinary wizards assume.

However, its general shape holds because time and history fight back against being changed. Harry knows they will do the same to him. But it doesn’t matter, as long as he can convince Severus Snape and his Slytherin compatriots not to follow Voldemort.

*

“I admit I was not expecting a candidate for the post of Defense professor so late in the summer, Mr. …Salvare.”

Harry smiles a little. Albus Dumbledore can never resist seeking answers to mysteries, and the long pause between the possible title and Harry’s possible last name is full of inquiry. But Harry doesn’t answer it. He just shakes his head and sits back. “I know, but I was traveling, and it wasn’t possible for me to apply before now.”

The answer is even true, which will satisfy Dumbledore’s ability to detect lies. The man nods and studies Harry’s paperwork. He has the true scores that he achieved in the Defense OWL and NEWT, which have been issued to him without the year, and he has an essay that he wrote discussing some of the theory that he studied as an Unspeakable. He knows that Dumbledore is in particular need of someone who can hit the students hard on theory, since records from Harry’s time show that students who took their OWLS and NEWTS in the spring 1975 almost all failed that portion of the exam.

In the end, Dumbledore utters a soundless sigh and looks up at him. “There have been no other candidates,” he admits, “and I wasn’t looking forward to asking the Ministry to send us a rotation of injured Aurors to fill in one at a time. The students need continuity. Welcome to our school, Mr. Salvare.”

Harry shakes the hand offered to him, ignores the way that Fawkes fluffs up his feathers and croons at him, and takes back the essay and dossier. “Thank you, Headmaster. Can you show me the quarters that will be mine?”

*

“Hey, where’s Auror Moody? I thought we were getting a lesson from him!”

Harry sends a tempered smile in the direction of Sirius Black, and continues studying the students in front of him. There are Gryffindors and Slytherins paired together for the Defense class. Harry can see why that arrangement didn’t endure in his time, but he’s glad for it right now. It means that he can show the students that he doesn’t favor one particular House and tone down some of that bitter rivalry.

It sends a small pang to his heart to see green-eyed Lily Evans sitting next to Severus Snape, but Harry pushes it away with the ease of long practice. He researched ten years before he was able to construct the ritual to send him into the past, and that’s on top of two years’ work as an Auror and five as an Unspeakable. He has his driving goal, and that’s more important than any individual.

Not that he won’t enjoy the chance to get to know his parents. But when he went through the ritual, he gave up a position in his own time. Time will flow around him like a river around a rock, and someone else will be born the son of James and Lily Potter. Harry will take that. He’ll take it happily, if he can prevent a war.

“I applied and Professor Dumbledore selected me, which means that I’ll be your Defense professor for the next year,” Harry says mildly. “I’m Henry Salvare. Professor Salvare. I hope that you’ll learn well from me.”

He sees the eyes of the pure-bloods sitting around Snape sharpen, and then one of them raises his hand. Harry nods to him, asking, “Your name?” even though he thinks he knows. He did study history for a long time before he made this jump, after all, which included _Daily Prophet_ photographs of some prominent Death Eaters.

“Evan Rosier, sir.” There’s a bit of doubt in Rosier’s voice about whether Harry deserves the title, but Harry lets it pass. “I don’t recognize your last name. What line do you come from?”

“The Salvare line,” Harry says blandly. He sees Snape tilt his head in response, and Lily nudges him and whispers something. Harry overlooks it for now, although he hopes they don’t make talking in class a frequent occurrence. “Yes, Mr.—?”

“Tiberius Wilkes, _sir_.” This young man is heavyset in the way that Rosier is lithe, although they both have dark hair and intense blue eyes. “I’ve never heard of the Salvare line, sir.”

“How clever of you, Mr. Wilkes. One point to Slytherin.” Harry sees some of the Gryffindors straighten in outrage, but he ignores them. “What does that suggest to you?”

“That it—doesn’t exist?”

Harry winks at him and turns away to look at the Gryffindors. “Any questions from this side of the room?”

“James Potter, sir.” James sounds a little more polite than the would-be Death Eater recruits, but only until you meet his eyes. “What House were you in when you were at Hogwarts?”

“What makes you think I went to Hogwarts?”

“Well, sir, you do have a British accent,” Sirius jumps in, and coughs when Harry looks at him. “Sorry. Sirius Black.”

Harry just nods without looking as though the name is news to him. “There are such things as private tutors, Mr. Black. Yes, miss?” he adds as Lily raises her hand. It takes all his self-control from saying her name.

“That’s not the same as saying you went to them,” Lily tells him.

Harry tips her a wink, too, and then raises his hand for a casual wave at the blackboard. He can hear the gasps that spread across the classroom as he makes the words of the first lesson appear there without a wand. For once, he revels in the attention. The more impressive he can appear, the more likely his Slytherin students, and others, are to pay attention to him, and absorb the lessons he has to teach about standing alone and not following a leader.

“Now, I have to admit that your Defense education up until this point has been abysmal, and you’ve been lucky rather than otherwise to achieve good scores. I assume you don’t want this practice to continue in your OWL year, therefore…”

*

“Professor Salvare, I had a question.”

Harry hides his pleasure in the fact that it took Severus Snape less than a fortnight to approach him, and nods to him instead. “Of course, Mr. Snape. What was it about?”

Severus shifts his weight from foot to foot. It took Harry less than a week to start thinking of him by his first name. He’s simply too different from the dark, sour-faced man Harry thinks of when the name “Snape” pops into his head. “Do you know anything about my history?”

“Should I, Mr. Snape? I do try not to pry into my students’ personal lives unless they force me to.” Harry is already famous for the fact that, when he finds snogging couples on his rounds of the castle, he gives his opinion of their technique in a loud, booming voice, and then sends them on to bed while they’re still flushed with humiliation. From the fleeting smile on Severus’s face, he’s heard about that.

But the smile doesn’t last long, and he casts his eyes down before he takes a deep breath. “My mother’s name is Eileen Prince.”

“All right,” Harry says, pretending to think. “I know a little about the Prince family. Did you want to tell me about them? I can promise that they don’t have any alliances or enmities with me.”

“No. It’s just—you said that we should think about how to bring glory to our _own_ names. How any name can have glory if we let it. That it doesn’t all depend on how ancient our family is or whether they’re magically powerful or—or even if they’re pure.”

Harry smiles. “I do believe that, Mr. Snape. I’m a half-blood myself, so it would be hypocritical of me to preach blood purity.”

Severus tenses. “I’m a half-blood as well.”

Harry nods. “All right,” he repeats. “Is there something you’d like me to do to treat you differently in class? I believed I had been fair, but please tell me if I haven’t.” He’s working in four directions when he teaches the Gryffindor-Slytherin classes, both showing the Gryffindors that he won’t get upset just because Slytherin’s symbol is a snake and that he won’t favor them unduly, and both showing the Slytherins that he won’t automatically praise Gryffindors because of their “Light” reputation and that he doesn’t care a whit about blood purity. It’s a delicate balancing act, and there’s always the chance that he did make a misstep.

“No, Professor. You’ve been fair.” Severus hesitates. “But I wondered—I’d like to claim my mother’s name publicly. I’ve used it privately, but everyone knows that I go by Snape and I get some ridicule for that. Do you think I should change my name?”

Harry considers it, tipping back against the desk. There are too many variables here. This could be a genuinely new change, or it could be time asserting itself and trying to drive Severus Snape back into the arms of the Death Eaters.

In the end, though, Harry gives the answer he would give if history didn’t matter, the one that he thinks would benefit Severus the most. “If you think this would give you something new, a source of strength and pride, then you should. But that strength and pride has to come from within. A name can’t _give_ it to you.”

Severus hesitates for a long moment. Then he says, “So I have to think about it.”

It doesn’t sound like a question, but Harry nods and smiles encouragingly. “Of course. And remember that you can come and talk to me if you want.”

Severus says, “Thank you, Professor Salvare,” and sounds like he means it.

*

“I see that we have you to thank for young Mr. Prince’s name change, Henry!”

Horace Slughorn is the one speaking to Harry, but professors are listening all down the table. After all, Severus will have corrected most of them from referring to him as “Snape” in the past few days. Harry turns around with a smile. “Yes, he asked my advice, and I told him that I thought it was a good idea _if_ the name would give him what he was seeking.”

“And what’s that?” Horace leans forwards eagerly. He seems fascinated with Harry, but also keeps a cautious distance just in case something changes and it turns out that Harry isn’t that powerful or well-connected after all. “He seemed inclined to credit you with everything!”

Harry chuckles and sips from his goblet of pumpkin juice. For a second, he looks straight into Albus’s twinkling eyes, but not long enough to risk any Legilimency. He turns back to Horace with a patient smile. “Strength and pride. I told him that names don’t give people that. But if he thought he had those qualities within him and the name could bring them out, then he should change it.”

“Well. That is a profound thought.” Horace hesitates. “I have found that names can be a source of those things.”

Harry snorts. “Considering how many powerful Muggleborn students and how many cringing pure-bloods we have, I don’t think strength really comes from it. You may be blinded by history, if you don’t mind me saying it, Horace.”

Horace laughs as if he doesn’t mind at all, but he does turn away and leave the conversation after that. Harry nods to Minerva as she leans in.

“Mr. Prince really did sound as if it was all your idea, when I asked him,” she says. “He was singing your praises all afternoon.”

Harry shrugs. He knew that would probably happen, and honestly, as long as Severus isn’t singing the praises of Voldemort or Dark magic, it’s an improvement. “You know how young people are. They lack nuance. He was still the one who had to make the decision.”

“Hmmm,” says Minerva, an interestingly ambiguous noise, and leans back to answer a question from Juliana Arias, the Muggle Studies teacher, on the other side of her.

Harry glances casually towards the Slytherin table and sees Severus staring at him with eyes that might hold burgeoning hero-worship. Harry smiles at him and glances as casually away.


	2. Chapter 2

“Professor Salvare?”

Harry turns around with a slight smile. It took Regulus Black longer to approach him than it did Severus. Then again, that makes sense, Harry thinks. Regulus is younger, and he doesn’t stand out in Slytherin House the way Severus does, with his self-confidence and his skill at Potions and his Gryffindor friend. It’s taken Regulus longer to decide that he _deserves_ answers, or that he’s not going to get them just from watching the older Slytherins.

Regulus stands in front of him and twines a quill around his fingers. It’s already broken, so Harry doesn’t comment on it. He just nods. “Yes, Mr. Black?”

“I—heard something. I don’t know if you want to act on it, because it’s a rumor, but I heard something,” Regulus says rapidly. From his tone, Harry reckons that other professors have scolded him for bringing “rumors” to them before.

“That’s all right, Mr. Black. You can tell me and I can investigate it.”

Regulus nods, looking relieved. “I heard that my brother and his friends were planning to play some kind of trick on Prince—Severus, I mean.” Regulus sounds a little self-conscious, maybe because Severus has been speaking with him for the first time. That’s cute, and it distracts Harry for a moment from the words.

When he hears them fully, he can feel his cold heart falling into his belly. _Shit._ He knows, he just knows, that this is one of the tricks that the force of history is pulling, trying to align things back into what they were before.

“Where?” he asks sharply.

Luckily, Regulus doesn’t take his tone the wrong way and get silent the way he sometimes does in class when he has the wrong answer to a question. “It was somewhere around a tree,” he says. “Sorry, sir. That’s all I know.”

Harry nods and tears out of the class as though someone’s lit him on fire.

Hopefully, that will be enough “information” to make it seem reasonable that he managed to guess where he was going, if someone asks him about his “knowledge” in the future.

*

“ _What do you think you’re doing, Mr. Black_?”

Sirius freezes when Harry abruptly looms over him and Severus. They’re not far from the Whomping Willow, and Sirius was just speaking about the “mysterious secret” located there and betting Severus that he wasn’t man enough to face it.

Harry has no idea of whether this happened the first time or not. All the participants in the Prank were dead by that point, and no one else had ever known the details.

He knows, though, that he has intervened in time this second rotation through. Sirius droops and looks away, projecting guilt so strongly that Harry doesn’t understand how the other professors always seem to be fooled by the Marauders’ excuses. Then again, most of them seem to be less suspicious of Gryffindors than Slytherins.

“Professor Salvare.” Severus draws himself up a little. “I don’t really know why you think you need to interfere. This is a private matter between me and Black, and we’re outside of class and it’s not curfew yet.”

Sirius perks up a bit, as though thinking that means he’ll get away with it, but Harry withers him with one careful glance. Then Harry sighs and turns to face Severus. “I don’t think that you can’t handle yourself,” he says. “But I do know that if you go down that tunnel into the Whomping Willow, you’ll regret it.”

“Why, sir?” At least Severus is listening.

“Because there’s a werewolf at the end of that tunnel, and he can either infect you, kill you, or scare you so badly that you’ll have nightmares about werewolves for the rest of your life,” Harry says bluntly. “Personally, I think your chances at infection are higher, because you’ll probably freeze in surprise.”

“How did you know that Remus is a werewolf?” Sirius blurts out in shock.

Harry stares at Sirius for a moment, until he can think about what he said, and turn as red as he always seemed to get in anger. “I pay attention,” Harry says finally. “And I thought that I didn’t have to intervene, given that the Headmaster obviously decided to let Mr. Lupin attend the school, until I saw the _despicable_ prank you were going to play, Mr. Black.”

Sirius tries to clear his throat. “It was just—it was just a joke.”

“One that could have seen a student either killed or turned into a werewolf, or at the very least traumatized.” Harry shakes his head and casually casts a shield that will float around them, invisible until it’s needed, and which will herd Sirius and Severus in the right direction. It’s charmed against letting animals through, too. The last thing he needs is Sirius assuming his Animagus form and slinking away. “Come on, Mr. Black. We’re going to the Headmaster’s office, and you can explain why you thought this was an _appropriate_ joke.”

Severus clears his throat, with more success than Sirius. “Do I need to come to, sir?”

“Oh, yes,” Harry says, and swallows his grin at the look of absolute dismay on Severus’s face. “In fact, you can explain to me what you were doing, trusting someone I know you think of as an enemy.”

“ _You_ don’t think of me that way, Professor Salvare,” Sirius says, with a note of hope in his voice.

“You are hardly threatening enough to be an enemy to me, Mr. Black,” Harry says, and doesn’t glance back to see the wind taken out of Sirius’s sails. “Now, come on. To the Headmaster’s office with both of you.”

*

“Ah, Professor Salvare. Did you think that you needed to punish both of them?”

“No, actually,” Harry says blandly as he watches the bees dancing on Dumbledore’s colorful robes. They’re blue and even have little golden hives and flowers on them. “I was going to give Mr. Prince a scolding for being stupid, but I thought you’d want to talk to both of them to find out exactly what went on.”

“Ah,” Dumbledore says again, in the ambiguous way that Harry isn’t sure if he cares for or not, and sits down behind his desk, watching Sirius and Severus both over the top of his glasses. “And what is this prank?”

Sirius stumbles his way through an explanation. Harry waits, giving Severus a reassuring glance when he tenses. Sirius isn’t giving a very good accounting of himself, but he _is_ all but protesting his innocence, and Severus seems to think that will convince Dumbledore and Sirius won’t be punished.

Well, that was true last time. It won’t be _this_ time, Harry thinks firmly. History will have to find another way to fight back.

“Hm.” Dumbledore turns to Severus when Sirius finishes his recitation. “And I’m sure that Mr. Snape will be happy enough to keep the secret of Mr. Lupin’s lycanthropy to himself, in exchange for not getting in trouble?”

Severus stares at him with burning eyes and opens his mouth. Harry’s elbow collides unsubtly with his ribs. And honestly, Harry doesn’t care if it’s unsubtle. He knows that Severus is about to get himself in the trouble Dumbledore seems to be offering to get him out of.

“I don’t see any reason why Mr. _Prince_ should be in trouble at all,” Harry says pleasantly. One thing he’s come to see during his few months in the past is that Dumbledore isn’t a bad man, but he does have a soft spot for the Marauders—maybe he was like them during his time as a student—and he looks the other way far too often when he’s trying to defend them. “Mr. Black was the one who betrayed his friend’s secret and was putting another student in danger of infection and death. I think he should be disciplined, absolutely.”

“I’m afraid that without a promise from Mr. Prince, I cannot let him simply go back to his common room.” Dumbledore leans back in his chair and frowns at Harry. “Mr. Lupin’s attendance here is conditional on his lycanthropy not being known.”

“And presumably also on his lycanthropy not putting anyone else in danger, right, Headmaster?”

Dumbledore hems and haws for a second. Severus catches Harry’s eye. He looks frankly amazed. Harry smiles slightly back. He knows that Severus hasn’t had many people to stand up for him, which is a shame, but Harry is here to prove them wrong and get Severus used to this kind of thing.

It’s all part of getting him ready to be independent enough that he’ll never even consider falling for Voldemort’s honeyed words.

“I don’t see that he was any danger to other students, Mr. Salvare, since you came along.”

“But he would have been without that, Professor.”

“Mr. Lupin’s attendance at Hogwarts is something of an experiment,” Dumbledore finally admits. “I hope that it will prove to be a successful one so that the young werewolves of future generations will not be denied the education they need. Such prejudices only make them outcasts in our society.”

Harry smiles warmly. That sounds more like the Dumbledore he knows, and a notion he can get behind. “I certainly hope that young werewolves get the education they need, too, Headmaster,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean indulging their friends’ desire to get other students in trouble. Have you considered the trauma Mr. Lupin would have been put through if Mr. Black had succeeded in this ‘prank’? How he would have felt knowing that he had infected or killed another student?”

Sirius gulps and shrinks. No, he hadn’t considered that, obviously. Harry wants to sigh about the fact that his godfather has changed so little over time and space, but Dumbledore is speaking.

“That is true enough.” Dumbledore looks sternly through his glasses at Sirius. “Mr. Black. Detention for a month, with Professor McGonagall, and one hundred points from Gryffindor.”

Sirius’s mouth tumbles open. “But, _sir_ —”

“I’d like to request that at least one week of Mr. Black’s detention be served with me,” Harry says firmly. “We have some lessons on responsibility and ethics to discuss.”

Dumbledore nods, his expression cordial. “I’m certain that Mr. Black will benefit from the lessons.” He turns to Severus. “And, Mr. Prince, may I ask for your word that you won’t betray Mr. Lupin’s condition to anyone who does not already know of it?”

“Yes, sir.” Severus smiles without much humor. “In exchange for Black’s word that he won’t prank me again.”

From the outraged look on Sirius’s face, Harry thinks he knows how history will attempt to mend itself. Sirius will be so angry that he and James and maybe even Remus will play another prank on Severus, and this will be the one that breaks apart his friendship with Lily and makes him bitter.

Well, Harry can do something about _that_ , too. He catches Sirius’s eye, and Sirius freezes. Harry holds the glance and then turns back to the desk, in time to see Dumbledore looking back and forth between him and Sirius. Well, let him. He can’t prevent Harry from teaching lessons, the way a professor is _supposed_ to do, and each professor at Hogwarts also runs their own detentions.

“I think that makes more than enough sense,” Dumbledore says. “A good proposition, Mr. Prince. Ten points to Slytherin.”

Severus looks stunned. Harry conceals his grin and listens carefully to the promises, Sirius’s sullen one and Severus’s clear-voiced one. Well, Sirius is as sincere as he can sound. Harry is going to spend some time drilling ethics into that stubborn head of his during Sirius’s detentions.

When they leave the Headmaster’s office, Sirius runs away without looking back at Harry. Severus walks at his side, and speaks in a slow voice when they reach the bottom of the moving staircase. “I owe you a Life-Debt, sir.”

Harry blinks, a bit wrong-footed by this. Then again, probably time is thinking that it’ll fasten the life-debt to Harry since it can’t do it to James. He just shrugs and says, “I didn’t actually prevent you from being bitten by a werewolf, Mr. Prince. Not for _certain._ You never came face-to-face with the werewolf. I’m sure that it doesn’t satisfy the oldest requirements for a life-debt.”

“Nevertheless, sir.”

Severus’s eyes have that hero-worship in them again, and Harry only hesitates for a second before nodding briskly. He can work with this. “Then I’ll ask nothing more of you than to keep your word to the Headmaster about not telling other people that Mr. Lupin is a werewolf even _if_ Mr. Black pranks you again.”

“But what do I do if he pranks me?”

“Come and tell me, Mr. Prince.”

Severus loses the battle against his smile then. “I’ll do that, Professor Salvare.”

*

Harry opens the classroom door, and Sirius slinks away. Harry shakes his head after him. He knows Sirius is smart; he has to be to have become an Animagus so young. But he’s also stubborn and sulky because he _knows_ that he did something wrong, and he doesn’t want to admit it.

Well, no matter. Sooner or later Sirius is going to _hear_ Harry’s lectures on ethics.

“Professor?”

Regulus is hovering there. Harry nods to him. “Did you have some questions about the homework, Mr. Black?”

“No, sir. I was hoping I could talk to you.”

“Of course.” Harry lets Regulus in and shuts the office door behind him. “Is someone in Slytherin bothering you because you came to me about Mr. Prince being in trouble?” He knows that some of the Slytherins, notably Evan Rosier, are still suspicious of him because of his last name and his refusal to favor Slytherins over Gryffindors.

“Nothing like that, sir. In fact, Evan told me he was happy I helped Severus.”

Harry notes the transition to first names and smiles a little. He’s glad that Regulus is starting to feel at home among the older pure-bloods. Harry is just going to make sure that doesn’t translate into Regulus following them merrily down the path to Voldemort, which it probably did in the first timeline. “Then what did you want to talk to me about?”

“I—I just want to know why you listened to me. Not many people do, you know. Some of the professors just think I’m a prig who’s trying to get my brother in trouble, and my parents don’t listen to me because I’m the younger one, and Sirius doesn’t listen to me because I’m in Slytherin.”

“I try to listen to everyone as much as possible,” Harry says quietly. “I made mistakes in the past when I didn’t do that and didn’t value people the way I should have. Now I know I should.”

“So I’m not special, sir?”

Harry can hear the yearning in Regulus’s voice to be told he is, and he has to respond to it. “I didn’t say that. Professor Slughorn tells me that you’re highly-talented in Potions, and I know that you’re doing well in my class. What I mean is that you’re not less special than others because of your last name or your House or your position in the family, but you’re also not _more_ special than they are because of those things. Do you see?”

Regulus’s brow is wrinkled. He nods slowly. “I think so, sir. It’s—I’m as special as Sirius is, right?”

“Right,” Harry says firmly. Maybe he can get Regulus to challenge his parents, too.

“Then would you give me special lessons like you’re giving Sirius?” Regulus asks in a rush. “I want to learn about ethics, too!”

Harry is surprised into a chuckle. “Mr. Black, I don’t know what your brother told you, but those aren’t lessons that I arranged just for his benefit, even though he needs them. They’re detentions.”

Regulus reaches out without taking his eyes from Harry’s, and casts a spell that rips a small chunk of stone out of the classroom floor. “Oops,” he says.

Harry rolls his eyes. “Detention, Mr. Black.”

Regulus grins. “Yes, sir.”

*

“But they’re _bad people._ ”

Harry sighs and sips a little from the teacup that he started bringing to these detentions two nights ago. “I know the reputation of your parents, Mr. Black, and I’m not going to argue with you. But that’s not the same as everyone who comes from their old House being evil, and I think you’re old enough to know it.”

Sirius clenches his hands on his knees. “I saw what being Sorted into Slytherin did to Reggie. He started imitating all those pompous pure-bloods who think there’s something wrong with being Muggleborn.”

“It’s true that your brother does need to learn to modulate his rhetoric,” Harry murmurs. It’s one of the things that he’s working with Regulus on, patiently pointing out to him that none of the “theories” on why pure-bloods are supposedly better hold water. “But look at you, Sirius. _You_ were Sorted into a House that has the idea that there’s something wrong with Slytherins, and you picked up those ideas right away, didn’t you?”

Sirius blinks and stares at him. Then he shakes his head and says, “It’s not the same thing.”

“Why not?”

“It—the pranks are harmless, and despising Muggleborns isn’t.”

“You know your prank could have killed Mr. Prince, Mr. Black. If it didn’t also kill your werewolf friend.” Harry puts his teacup down. “You need to stop thinking that nothing is wrong with hating Slytherins, that nothing is wrong with hating people in general. You’re extending your hatred every day. I know full well that you hate Slytherins, and you hate your family, and you hate Dark wizards, and I heard you the other day talking about Ravenclaws with a jeer in your voice.”

“Some of the Ravenclaws are Dark! Some of them were talking about joining that Dark Lord who’s running around!”

“And you haven’t heard similar talk among the Gryffindors, Mr. Black?”

“Wh-what? Who?”

Harry shakes his head. He doesn’t intend to betray their names, much less that he knows those names from history rather than actually overhearing discussions of their desire to serve Voldemort. “I don’t need to name them to know that they exist. You _must_ gain control of your temper, Mr. Black. I know that most of the time you truly mean no harm, but sooner or later, that will not be enough. You’ll kill someone, and if you aren’t expelled and your wand snapped, then someone will declare blood feud on your family and kill you that way.”

Sirius looks paler than he ever did when Harry knew him for the first time. His eyes look almost black, and he abruptly clutches his hair. “It just hurts, all the time,” he whispers.

“What does, Mr. Black?”

“The—the knowledge that no matter what, I can’t fit in.” Sirius stares at him. “At home, I’m the Gryffindor Black who shamed his family. At school, I’m the Gryffindor prankster who goes too far and is probably a secret Slytherin at heart. And you’re telling me that I’m just as bad as my family.” He drops his head into his hands.

“Not as bad,” Harry reassures him, clasping Sirius on the shoulder. “I promise, Mr. Black. You’re already doing better at keeping people you don’t like alive. You’ll learn better. And one thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to follow the people your family does _or_ the ones your Gryffindor yearmates do.”

“Who should I follow, then?”

“Yourself,” Harry says gently, and sets about teaching him how.

*

Regulus is a little harder, but then again, he’s also younger than Sirius, and he did grow up hearing that rules were good things and believing that.

“Some of the older Slytherins talk about the Dark Lord,” he confesses to Harry, eating an ice that the house-elves brought from the kitchen when Harry asked. “But they do it less since you’ve been here.”

Harry smiles and slides his own half-eaten ice across the little table to Regulus. He’s still expecting history to strike back in some way, but all seems to have been quiet since he stopped the prank on Severus. “What do they talk about now?”

“Whether it’s true what you said, that Muggleborns can be just as strong as pure-bloods in Defense.” Regulus grabs Harry’s strawberry ice and inhales it.

“What do you think, Mr. Black?”

Regulus still freezes up when Harry asks him a question, but he’s getting better at it. He sits back with a deep breath and a bit of smeared strawberry on his cheek. “I think that what you said made good sense. There’s no—there’s no way of tracing someone’s blood when it spills out of their veins. It’s all the same color. Blood doesn’t know anything.”

Harry nods. “And if magical humans and Muggles were all really different from each other, we couldn’t have children together. And there would be no Muggleborns and no Squibs.”

“That’s true,” Regulus says softly, staring down at his hands. “You know, our parents don’t like Sirius much, but at least he’s not a Squib. That’s the most shameful thing a Black can be born. Much more shameful than a Gryffindor or someone with Light magic.”

“I know.” Harry squeezes Regulus’s hand. “You know, I believe that people who _do_ have the kind of power we do have a duty to make the world better.”

“For who?”

Harry smiles. Regulus has a sharp mind under his floppy black hair. “Squibs. Muggles. Muggleborns. Pure-bloods who don’t want to just do what their families tell them. Gryffindors. Slytherins. Goblins. Veela. House-elves.”

Regulus stares at him with his mouth open, and Harry laughs a little. “I’m sorry, that probably went too far for someone raised as a pure-blood Black.”

Regulus swallows. “N-not really. I just never thought about it before.” He ducks his head and spends a moment picking at the cloth of his robes. Then he whispers, “You really think that we can change the world?”

“I do,” Harry says firmly. “It has nothing to do with names. That’s why I told Mr. Prince that he had to be the one to choose his name. It’s about what we value and what we believe in and what matters.”

Regulus swipes the strawberry piece off his cheek and nods slowly. “Yeah. It would be.”

Harry frowns as he hears a chime that seems to ring from all the corners of the room at once, but Regulus doesn’t react to it. That’s because he can’t hear it. Harry is the only one here who can.

That’s the chime of history, signaling a significant event. This is going to matter, somehow, Harry thinks as he distractedly sends Regulus back to the Slytherin common room. Maybe time is going to try to push Regulus in the direction of being the next Dark Lord, to replace Voldemort, who most of the Slytherins won’t follow now.

Harry narrows his eyes. Well, he’s just going to stop _that_ , and give Regulus enough strength and self-confidence that he won’t need a fake Lord. That’s the way it is. That’s what he came back in time to do.

The mocking chime sounds again, like the tolling of a death bell this time.

Harry raises his head and stares into the distance. “You don’t frighten me,” he murmurs.

This time, time is silent.


	3. Chapter 3

“Happy birthday, Severus.”

“How did you know today was my birthday?” Severus accepts the gift from Harry’s hands, but also watches him with a healthy dose of suspicion that Harry can’t actually blame him for.

Harry shrugs a little and smiles as he nods at the wrapped gift. “I pay attention.”

Severus considers him with another side of wonder, but the gift is holding the majority of his attention. He probably also wonders why Harry gave it to him in the Defense practice room after class.

In truth, it’s just because Harry thought Severus might like to savor the gift instead of having to think about the politics of opening a present wrapped in neutral white paper in front of the other Slytherins. But it also has the advantage of giving him a front-row seat to seeing Severus’s face soften as he twitches the stirring rod out of the depths of the paper.

“Rune-carved glass,” Severus breathes. “It’s so expensive…”

Harry nods. The runes enhance the effectiveness of any potion stirred with that kind of rod and they’re much in demand, but it takes so much skill to carve the runes into the glass without breaking it that they’re also damn expensive. However, Harry has more than enough Galleons. Before he came back, he emptied the Potter vault of all the “gifts” that misguided people have made to him down the years. He didn’t touch the main Potter money, so it would still be there for any children James and Lily have, but there’s no extra anymore, either.

“Professor Salvare, I can’t accept this.”

Harry did anticipate this, because Severus hates charity, and he folds Severus’s fingers gently around the stirring rod when he holds it out again. “I think you’ll find you can.”

“But it could be seen as a mark of favoritism…you could get in trouble…”

Harry smiles, marveling that Severus has changed so much his first concern is for another person and not himself. “I cleared it with the Headmaster already, Mr. Prince. And I think you’ll find that I have other gifts for the students whose birthdays I know. The ones I don’t know will just have to tell me, won’t they?”

Severus blinks. “You think you’ll be here more than one year, sir?”

“I intend to work on the curse and see if I can defeat it.” And that’s true, Harry thinks. He has studied the previous ten years’ worth of professors who were sent away by the curse; that study just occurred before he came back in time, rather than here. “I think it’s anchored to a specific place in the castle itself, but a hidden one, or someone would have noticed it before now. So I need to find and destroy it.”

“If anyone can do it, it’s you, Professor Salvare.”

Harry coughs and clears his throat a little at the shining gaze that Severus turns on him. The last thing he wants is for Severus to make a different stupid, life-altering decision because of his admiration of Harry. “Yes. Well. I hope you enjoy your gift, Mr. Prince. And always remember that you’re the only one who can really choose what you want to be.”

Severus nods, looking unusually thoughtful, and leaves the classroom, cradling the stirring rod in his hand.

*

“ _Protego_!”

Harry smiles in genuine triumph as he watches the Shield Charm spring up around Lily. He is, of course, holding back and not using the full strength that he could bring to bear to crack it, but that she’s managed one this strong, a little over halfway through the winter term, is impressive. She couldn’t do it at all at the beginning. “Excellent, Miss Evans!”

Harry sees Evan Rosier scowl out of the corner of his eye. He keeps his sigh to himself. Rosier always starts when Harry says Lily’s name, probably because of the similarity of her last name and his first, and then acts as though he’s entrenching himself even further in Muggleborn and Muggle hatred.

Well, Harry has a plan for that, too. He asks Rosier to stay back after class, and Rosier leans on the doorway with his arms folded. He sneers a little when Harry spells the door closed.

“You might as well know that I am not going to join your little cult,” he says.

“Cult?”

“Whatever you’re drawing Prince and Black into. I don’t admire you. I know that you must have a Mudblood ancestor.”

“Muggleborn mother, actually,” Harry says off-handedly. “No one so distant as an ancestor.” He waits for the disgust to sink into Rosier’s expression, and then nods and draws his wand. “Duel me, Mr. Rosier.”

“What?”

“You seem awfully convinced of the superiority of what you call pure blood, and that must include magical superiority, mustn’t it?” Harry draws up his power and lets it form around him in a coruscating white aura, visible to the startled student. Most of the time, he keeps his magic quiet, because there’s no point in showing off. He doesn’t want to alert Voldemort to anything unusual about the new Defense professor, and he doesn’t want to frighten his students so badly that they stop trying in class because they think he’s just so much better than they are.

Rosier’s face pales rapidly. “But—but Severus and Regulus are always saying how good you are—”

“Are you saying you believe them and that it’s not a cult?” Harry holds his wand out to the side and smiles winsomely at Rosier.

Rosier wavers for a second, debating between his pride and his good sense. His pride wins, but Harry hopes that’s the last time it will for a while. He draws his own wand and says, “I’ll show you that a pure-blood can beat a half-blood.”

“And if you win the duel?”

Rosier pauses, as if he’s so far off-balance that he’s not even thinking about the usual wager that accompanies a duel like this. Then he narrows his eyes and sets his feet. “Then I want you to admit in front of the class that I won.”

“Very well. And if I win, then I require you never to see the word ‘Mudblood’ again.”

“You want me not to call them what they are?”

“Relax,” Harry murmurs, even as his magic wells up behind him and spills over his shoulders. “You’ll win anyway, right? So you don’t have to worry about finer points like the truth of a name.”

Rosier hesitates, but then gives in to his own outraged pride and casts the first curse, a Body-Bind.

Harry pivots away from that and blows up the floor at Rosier’s feet. He dives for cover with a yelp. Harry sighs at him and raises his voice. “Do you _really_ think that you can impress me by running away, Mr. Rosier?”

Maybe it’s the mocking, chiding tone or the way that Harry is acting as though he’s still addressing Rosier like a student, but the Slytherin pops up from behind the desk that was sheltering him and replies with a long string of curses. Some of them are well-cast. Some of them are Dark Arts. Some of them are powerful.

Harry partially admires Rosier’s skill while letting every single spell earth itself against the shield of brilliant magic that he’s carrying around with him. He stands in the middle of the classroom floor without raising his wand to defend himself again and smiles, half-mockingly, at Rosier.

“I—how did you do that?” Rosier whispers.

“Because power doesn’t depend on the color of your blood,” Harry replies coolly, and then unleashes a single spell.

It’s actually only an overpowered _Lumos_ Charm, but Rosier falls back and away from it with a shriek, waving his arms around and then clasping his hands in front of his eyes. Harry folds his arms and regards him with a moment of silence. Rosier lies on the floor, whimpering, his hands still over his eyes.

“I assume that you would concede you have lost the duel?” Harry murmurs.

“Yes. I will not speak the word ‘Mudblood’ again, sir.”

The tone of respect in his voice probably won’t last very long, Harry thinks. But he hopes that it’ll last long enough, which is to make Rosier _think_ about the promise he made and do something about it that doesn’t involve killing.

In the end, Rosier picks up his wand and creeps out of the room without speaking to him again. Harry rolls his eyes. He can only hope that the lesson will be lasting

*

“I don’t really understand why we can’t prank Snivellus anymore, Sirius. I mean, you made the promise that you wouldn’t, but _we_ didn’t.”

Harry Disillusions himself with a simple wave of his wand and leans slowly around the bulk of the tree he’s been walking towards. This is the first time that he’ll be able to observe Sirius interacting with the other Marauders since the scene in Dumbledore’s office. Harry has to admit that he’s curious to see how Sirius handles it.

“I don’t feel like it,” Sirius says, standing with his head down and one foot kicking at the earth.

“That’s a stupid excuse and you know it.” James has his arms folded and a frown on his face. Harry wonders if he looked that petulant, once upon a time, and then dismisses the wondering; he knows he did. “You don’t want to get in trouble with Professor Salvare. But don’t you see, _we_ could do the prank and then you wouldn’t get in trouble.”

“I told you what I was going to do to Prince that night.”

“Yeah, I know. You’ve said it five times.”

Harry sees Remus, who is standing a little back and watching both Sirius and James intently, wince. He doubts that Remus got over it as well as James apparently has.

“I don’t—Professor Salvare sort of shocked me into thinking.” Sirius looks up. Harry is standing so that he can only see the profile of his former godfather’s face, but it’s dark and resolved enough that he looks more adult than he did most of the times Harry saw him in that former life. “I don’t really want to hurt people. But that’s what was happening when I was running around and letting my temper and my hatred control me. I was really no better than a Slytherin.”

Harry frowns a little, but he listens closely to Sirius’s voice, and he doesn’t think he hears any real hatred behind it. It’s just a way of getting James to listen—hopefully. Right now, James is leaning back and staring at Sirius skeptically.

“A prank’s a prank. It’s not a life-changing bloody situation, Sirius.”

“It was for me! Weren’t you listening, James? It would have changed Prince’s life if it happened. And mine.”

“And mine.” Remus speaks up now, with a resolve that Harry has never known him to have. He moves forwards so that James has to pay as much attention to him as to Sirius. “Come on, James, if a prank is just a prank, why you are so insistent that we have go on playing them?”

“I don’t like targeting Prince,” Pettigrew says abruptly. He’s been leaning against the tree opposite where Harry is, his hands in his robe pockets as he watches the other Marauders argue. “It was fun when he would turn all red and fight back, but now he just goes and tells the professors, and they believe him. I don’t want another detention.”

Harry lets out a slow, relieved breath. He’s been trying his best to reach Pettigrew along with all the others, but he knows that his own distaste has slowed him down. At least Pettigrew has seen that there is someone who values his input in class, and in fact ignores James when he jumps in to try and show off. Harry is teaching them a lot of things that James hasn’t learned, so his contributions aren’t always as stunning as he tries to make them.

And that’s okay, because he’s as much a kid as the rest of them. Harry does acknowledge James when he isn’t trying to show off and says something really intelligent. But he’s not going to reward bragging.

“Honestly.” James looks from one face to another and shakes his head. “Never thought I’d see the day when the Marauders turned into a bunch of bloody cowards.”

Sirius tenses for a second, and then snorts. “Yeah, one thing I learned from Professor Salvare is how not to react to words. I didn’t do it when my parents called me worse names than that over the bloody winter holiday, and I’m not going to do it now, James.”

“But it was just pranking!” James is running his hand through his hair and looking at Sirius imploringly. “It’s not like we did anything _really_ wrong.”

Harry holds in a snort, understanding now why James sounds so desperate. He doesn’t want to admit that he did something wrong and have to start thinking differently of himself, any more than Sirius did at the start of their ethics lessons.

“We would have,” Sirius says flatly. Harry can tell from the tilt of his head that he disagrees with James about whether they did anything wrong, but he’s also smart enough to know that he won’t get away with arguing with his friend about that right now. “Listen, James, I just want to go and eat, okay?”

“And then do what?”

“What about practicing some of those dueling spells that Professor Salvare taught us?”

James wavers for a second, probably because he’s understandably a little prejudiced against Harry right now, and then brightens. “Yeah, the one he showed us on Monday was pretty brilliant, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Sirius says, and then exchanges glances with Remus and Pettigrew as James runs towards the Great Hall. “Thanks for standing with me, you lot.”

“I’ve wanted to stop for a while,” Remus says quietly. “Professor Salvare is right. We were going to go too far and really hurt someone.”

“And it’s not as much fun when you get left out of lots of pranks and then have to listen to James Almighty Potter snickering about how impressed he is with himself,” Pettigrew mutters, rolling his eyes.

“We ought to prank _him_ ,” Sirius mutters.

Pettigrew’s eyes gleam. “I’m game.”

“We just said we were going to stop,” Sirius mutters, but the protest is half-hearted, and Pettigrew throws his arm around one of his shoulders and Remus grasps the other.

“But we can have just one more…just one…”

Harry smiles, and slips away.

*

“Professor Salvare?”

Regulus’s voice is shaking a little. Harry stands up at once, concerned. He was marking essays, but he can always put those aside when a student seeks him out in his office, and he can tell from the way Regulus looks that he needs help, badly. There’s a long streak of blood down the side of his left arm, and he’s limping as he comes into Harry’s office and falls heavily onto the stool.

“What happened to you, Regulus?” Harry scolds himself a second later for slipping into use of Regulus’s first name, but Regulus is sitting with his head drooping a way that says he doesn’t resent it. Maybe even needs it.

“I told Mother and Father that I wouldn’t be taking the Dark Lord’s brand in a year the way they want me to,” Regulus whispers. “They cursed me. They—I barely got through the Floo in time…”

 _Of course._ That’s why Harry stared like an idiot for a minute when he saw Regulus in the doorframe. The students are technically supposed to be on Easter holiday at the moment, and not return until tomorrow. Harry was surprised to see a student in the castle at all.

“Can I—can you open the Slytherin common room for me, as a professor?” Regulus leans back on the stool and hisses in slight pain as Harry treats the cut on his arm. “I don’t think that I’ll be able to get in there on my own when the wall is spelled shut over the holiday.”

“Of course. Or I can summon Professor Slughorn, if you would feel more comfortable with him.”

Regulus snorts. “He’s never seen me as anything but a Black, sir. You were the first one who found value in me beyond that. I trust you.”

Harry nods. “Very well. And—Mr. Black. I am sorry about your family.”

Regulus looks at the floor for a second, then takes a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter. I won’t let it matter. I hoped they would accept it, but—they don’t define me. I’m not a Black the way that Professor Slughorn always tries to tell me I am.”

Harry smiles at him. “That’s right. We are more than our names.”

“You’re more than your name, aren’t you?” Regulus mutters, squinting at him. “Even though you chose Salvare on purpose. I know some Latin, of course.”

“Of course,” Harry says. “And I’m afraid that I can’t comment on that, Mr. Black. It would mean telling you some things that no student should know.”

Regulus looks offended. “I would never betray your secrets, Professor. You ought to know that.”

“It has nothing to do with that,” Harry says, with a quietness that makes Regulus sit back and seems to reassure him. “It has to do with children too young carrying burdens they aren’t meant to bear. Your family has already asked you to do enough of that, Mr. Black. I won’t.”

Regulus hesitates, then nods. “All right, sir.” He watches as Harry heals the bruising on his leg, and then adds, “Did you hear that most of the other Slytherins are turning their backs on the Dark Lord, as well?”

Harry’s heart jumps, but he’s glad that he’s looking down, so that he doesn’t have to look up and into Regulus’s eyes. “That is wonderful news. Thank you for sharing it with me, Mr. Black.”

“Do you know what they’re going to do instead?”

Harry looks up and shakes his head. He sometimes comes upon a tight cluster of older Slytherins in a corridor, who always shut up when they see him, but he’s deliberately tried to stay out of it. “They haven’t shared their plans with me.”

Regulus hides a smile and stands. “Then I’ll let them share it with you, sir. Good night. Thank you.”

“I’m sorry that you were injured because of my advice, Mr. Black.”

“Oh, stop, professor. You say that we should make our decisions and own them. It was my decision to stand up to my family right then. I could have kept quiet and slipped away during the summer. I know Sirius is planning to do that. But I didn’t want that. You just gave me the courage to do it. You didn’t hurt me.”

Harry holds Regulus’s eyes for a second and then nods in relief when he can see that he means what he says. It’s good to know that he didn’t bring someone more pain by trying to help them.

“Good night, Mr. Black” he says, and sees Regulus’s answering smile before he slips out of Harry’s office. Harry leans back and considers the ceiling thoughtfully. He really did expect one of history’s strikes before now. It doesn’t seem right that it should let everything happen on an alternative course without moving to prevent it…

The chime sounds from the walls.

Harry narrows his eyes, and stands up to return to the essays, and, after that, his search of the school for the place where the curse on the Defense position is anchored.

*

Harry shakes his head with a snort as he examines the banister in front of him. He finally located the curse, but only because he’s been searching for weeks and heightening his senses with spells all the while. Voldemort was clever for once, and he put it right where people would never notice it but have to pass it every day, giving it more chances to affect the Defense professor.

The banister of the Grand Staircase.

“What are you doing, Professor Salvare?”

That’s Severus, staring up at him in what looks like apprehension from the floor below. There are lots of students there, in fact, coming out of the Great Hall as dinner ends. Harry might or might not have planned that.

“Destroying the curse that destroyed my predecessors,” Harry says, and brings his wand down. “ _Nihil_!”

The countercurse is not exactly a countercurse, because Harry would have to study for much longer to understand the exact spell Voldemort used on the Defense position, but that doesn’t matter. What matters, most of all, is that he studied the right word to use, and the right wand movement, long before he left the Department of Mysteries to come here.

The countercurse surrounds the banister with black light, and then rises up in what looks almost like a reverse waterfall. Students gasp and cry out, but Harry ignores them, just surrounding the magic with a barrier of red light so that it can’t spread and harm anyone. But if he’s right, it should only destroy what it’s directed at.

And that’s exactly what happens. The banister chunk that was cursed goes flying into the air, and then splits further and further apart, into tiny, glowing atoms that then scatter. Harry grins. He doesn’t think he’ll tell anyone who knows anything about Muggles that what he did was the nearest thing to a nuclear explosion.

He looks down to find that he has a silent, respectful audience. Well, Dumbledore is shaking his head at Harry a little chidingly—while smiling—and Horace is gaping and Minerva looks as if she’s about to start scolding him, but what matters is the fact that Gryffindors and Slytherins are standing together, staring at him, and then they start to applaud.

And one of them is Evan Rosier, who so disdained him a few months ago, and one of them is Severus, who seems to have grown beyond his hero-worship to simply appreciate what Harry did here, and one of them is James, who is grinning like this is all some sort of grand prank. Regulus waves madly from the back of the crowd. Harry waves back.

He does see some of the older pure-blood Slytherins towards the back of the group, like Tiberius Wilkes, nodding deliberately to each other. Harry narrows his eyes a little. Well, if they have some plan to ambush him and deliver him to Voldemort, or even just hurt the students under his protection, he’ll deal with it when it manifests.

*

Harry leans back in his chair and sips mulled wine from a silver cup that the house-elves brought him, even though the weather is warm enough that by now, it should really be something other than mulled wine. Well, today Lily accepted one of James’s invitations to Hogsmeade. Things are changing, Harry thinks, and with only a few weeks left until the OWL and NEWT exams, he might not have time after today to celebrate how much.

But right now, he thinks he’s allowed to drink a toast to the people who will no longer be his parents, if he wants to.

A brisk knock sounds on the door, and Harry grimaces. Of course, he thought about toasting and celebrating, and this is what happened. He sighs and sits up. “Come in.”

He’s not surprised when Severus walks into the room, but he is surprised to see Regulus behind him, and Evan Rosier, and Tiberius Wilkes, and some of the sixth- and seventh-year Slytherins who seem to have been whispering the most about him since he destroyed the curse on the Defense position. “Gentlemen. And ladies,” he adds, seeing Andromeda near the back of the group. That puzzles him, since she graduated a while ago. “What can I do for you?’

Severus glances around. People grumble and shift, but no one actually disagrees with the fact that he’s elected himself speaker. Severus grins in satisfaction—an expression that Harry never saw on his face before this—and draws his wand.

Harry fights the impulse to snap up his magic around himself the way he did in the duel with Rosier. The last thing he wants to make it seem like is that he doesn’t trust them. “Yes, Mr. Prince?”

Severus kneels, shocking Harry utterly. Behind him and around him, the other Slytherins draw their wands and kneel, too. Harry stares at their faces, the expressions of determination and—

Awe. And Severus’s hero-worship. And Regulus’s narrow-eyed look that he used when he said that he would never betray Harry’s secrets.

 _Oh,_ shit.

Harry sits up, while the smug chime rings from the walls. Perhaps he can head this off before it gets started, history’s counter-strike. It’s replacing Voldemort with _him_ as the young Slytherins’ leader.

“You know that I’ve taught you to stand up for yourselves,” he says hurriedly. “To honor something other than your names and your purity of blood. You know that blood purity doesn’t matter next to—”

“Next to chosen allegiances, that’s right, sir.” Severus’s gaze never wavers. “And we’ve chosen _you_ , the man who has the most power of anyone in this school and taught us right from wrong and never scorned us even though the Dark Lord came from our House. The one who gave us refuge from our pasts and our families and taught us honor.”

“The one who taught us to make our own decisions,” Regulus pipes up, and damn him, he’s _grinning_. “It’s our decision to follow you, Professor Salvare.”

“It’s not an honor I can accept,” Harry begins in a frosty tone.

And then he stops. As though he can see the future, as though he’s had a vision of it the way he finally had the vision of what could stop the war when he was planning to come back, he knows what will happen if he refuses them.

The more easily-offended ones like Wilkes and Rosier will drift away and probably become Death Eaters after all. Regulus will feel abandoned and like he can trust no one, and might die battling alone. Severus will draw himself back and start asking if Harry’s decisions were trustworthy ones, and turn his back on adults again—adults who never even put on a show of standing up for him.

History is fragile, but it’s also strong. It will force these young men and women back into the same positions Harry came to save them from.

Harry takes a deep breath and says, “I won’t be a lord. I won’t brand you. I won’t claim your allegiance the way the Dark Lord does.”

“We don’t want that, or we wouldn’t be here,” Wilkes says in a patient voice. “We choose to _give_ our allegiance, and that’s what we want. Someone who leads us but lets us think for ourselves.”

“Someone who’s going to help us use our power to make things better for everyone,” Regulus says. “You know. The way you once told me.”

Harry wants to bang his head into something. He understands the meaning of the chime that night he spoke with Regulus, now. Regulus was understanding “we” to be “you and me,” not “everyone who has the same kind of power.”

Harry sighs and reaches out to claim Severus’s wand. Severus smiles and bows his head. “I do offer my freely-chosen allegiance to Henry Salvare,” he begins. “To fight beside him, to fight with him, to keep my promises to him, to do him honor…”

And Harry knows he will make the same promises back, and they will be binding. He looks across the sea of eager, expectant young faces, and sighs a little.

Well. He came back to teach them to stand on their own, and he gave them another leader to follow, instead. But at least they’re stubborn enough to ask questions and _think_ about the answers, and some of them have rejected opinions they grew up with all their lives.

It will have to be enough.

**The End. ******


End file.
